The Hidden Heir (Ruthless Bratva Daddies #4)

Chapter 1

VALENTINA

My son doesn't know what fear is, and I have willingly paid for that in ways he'll never see.

Tonight, for instance, I am paying with my sanity. Over pajama pants.

This is the hill Mikey has chosen to die on: twenty-six pounds of naked defiance doing victory laps around the couch while I kneel on the rug holding his pajama bottoms like a very tired bullfighter who has seriously underestimated the bull.

"Mikey. Baby. It's bedtime."

"No pants!" he announces to the room.

I have never loved anything more.

I have also never wanted anything more than for him to be unconscious in that crib.

Thirteen hours. That's how long I've been on my feet today. My left eye has started twitching.

Two years of double shifts and secondhand everything have bought me a house the size of a generous closet on a street where nothing happens, and a little boy who has never once had a reason to be afraid. I'd make the trade again in half a heartbeat.

It takes three laps and a negotiated settlement: pants in exchange for one more reading of the hippo book.

He's asleep before the hippos even get to the mud, dark curls stuck to his forehead, one fist curled under his chin. I stand over the crib longer than I need to, the way I do every night.

I turn off his lamp and go make tea.

The kitchen window over the sink faces the street. One last look before bed. The neighbor's minivan. The Hendersons' trash bins already out for tomorrow. Overachievers. Probably have their taxes done too.

I catch myself in the dark glass and almost laugh. Tired eyes, hair escaping its bun, a smear of something on my collar that I'm choosing to believe is applesauce.

The kettle starts to whisper.

I reach for the little tin beside it. Jasmine and chamomile, my one extravagance, four dollars a box and worth every damn penny.

I drop the bag into my mug and pour. Steam curls against my face. The house is quiet. Mikey is asleep. My feet hurt. And for the first time all day, nobody needs anything from me.

I let out a long breath.

There. Peace.

Then the porch light goes out.

I go still.

My whole body goes quiet the way it used to. The stillness of small animals, the instinctive kind that says don't move, don't breathe, don't be seen.

I thought I'd unlearned it. Apparently it was just waiting.

For a few seconds, I stare at the square of darkness where the light should be.

Come on, Valentina. It's a lightbulb. A lightbulb is not a crisis. A lightbulb is a trip to Home Depot.

Except.

Except I changed that bulb three days ago, dragged the stepladder out of the closet myself, dusted a dead moth off the fixture, screwed it in tight.

Bulbs don't die in three days.

I lean toward the window, slow, and look through the gap in the curtain.

There's a car across the street. Black, long, parked nose-out between the Hendersons' minivan and the Riveras' SUV. Engine off. Lights off. It doesn't belong here.

Someone is sitting inside.

So much for the chamomile.

My heart slams once, hard, like a fist on a door. And then the actual door.

Knock. Knock. Knock.

The mug jumps in my hand. Tea scalds my wrist and I barely feel it.

Nobody knocks on my door. Not at night. Not ever. The landlord texts. The mailman leaves packages. In two years I have made sure, carefully and deliberately and obsessively sure, that there is no one on this earth who would stand on my porch after dark.

"Mama?"

Mikey's voice, small and blurry, from his room. The knock woke him.

"It's okay, baby," I call. My voice comes out steady. Good. Lie convincingly, because nothing about this is okay.

I set the mug down without looking and go get him. I don't even decide to; my feet just take me there, and then he's in my arms.

"I'm here."

His head drops onto my shoulder like that's enough. Like those two words can make anything true.

Some animal part of my brain is calmer with his weight in my arms. Another part is screaming that I've just carried my son toward the danger. But I can't leave him alone in a dark room. Not tonight. Not with a black car on my street and a dead porch light and a knock.

Think.

I stand in my own hallway and I run it. Back door: too exposed. Car keys on the hook, car in the drive, Mikey's seat already strapped in. Thirty seconds, maybe forty. Shoes? Forget shoes. Diaper bag? Forget the diaper bag. Phone. Keys. Mikey. Go.

Except if someone killed my porch light, someone could be watching the back too. And if the man across the street is watching the front...

I'm not looking at an exit. I'm looking at a trap.

The knock comes again. Three beats. Patient.

Patient is worse than angry. Angry kicks doors in. Patient knows you have nowhere to go.

Mikey's fingers curl into my shirt. "Who dat?"

Jesus.

"No one, baby."

Another lie. I'm on a roll tonight.

I move toward the door. Every step feels wrong. Staying still feels worse.

I look through the peephole.

The porch is dark. Of course it's dark. That's why the light went out. Not a bulb, not Home Depot. Him.

The streetlamp throws just enough gray light to shape him.

Tall. Suit. Standing easy, hands loose, like men stand when they have never once had to wonder if they're welcome.

He isn't shifting from foot to foot or checking his phone or glancing toward the street.

He's standing a half step to the side of the door, out of the streetlamp's line, so nothing behind him can throw his shadow.

Not nervous. Habit.

He's just waiting.

For me.

Then he tilts his head, and the light finds his face.

Everything in me goes cold and quiet, the way the world goes quiet before a tornado.

Oh, God.

I know that face. Everyone in Chicago's old money and old blood knows that face. The papers call him the Devil of Chicago, usually right above the word acquitted.

Luca Petrucci.

No. Anyone but him.

Stefano told me once: If anything ever happens to me, the last man you want standing at your door is my brother. My brother doesn't negotiate.

Stefano is dead. It was on the news eleven days ago. Eleven days I've spent pretending that changed nothing.

Two years I've been gone. Two years, and Stefano never once came looking.

His brother found me in eleven days.

Apparently denial has an expiration date.

I could run. But men like this don't knock on doors they haven't already calculated. If Luca Petrucci is on my porch, then the back door, the alley, the forty seconds, all of it is already his. The knock isn't a question. It's a courtesy.

And somehow that's worse.

So I do the only thing left. I settle my son higher on my hip. Mikey immediately sticks his thumb in his mouth.

Great. At least one of us is handling this well.

I unlock the door, and I open it on a man who buries people, with my chin up like my mother taught me.

"Mr. Petrucci."

Something flickers across his face when I say his name, there and gone, too fast to read.

Up close he's worse.

Older than Stefano was, mid-forties maybe, silver threaded through dark hair and a short gray beard, shoulders that fill the doorframe, hazel eyes that catalog me the way an appraiser catalogs an estate.

Fuck.

He's beautiful the way winter is beautiful. The way certain predators are: built by God to be looked at right up until the end.

And I hate myself, I hate myself, because some idiot corner of my brain notices.

Seriously? Now?

Of course he looks like that. Of course the man who might kill me tonight looks like that.

His eyes are doing their own arithmetic, and they snag.

On the flare of my hip where Mikey rides it.

On the rest of me, all curve and fullness, a body I made peace with a long time ago because it grew a whole person and then carried him through two hard years.

Men have always had opinions about it.

I've never particularly cared to hear them.

This man's jaw goes tight. And he looks away first.

He looks away?

Huh. I have no idea what to do with that.

"Miss Peroni." His voice is low and unhurried. Of course it is. Men who look like him never squeak.

He shifts his weight. His jacket moves. And I see it.

Leather strap. Black metal. The barrel too long, because of what's threaded onto the end of it.

Gun. Silencer.

Every smart thought in my head disappears.

Mikey.

My arm locks around my son so hard he squirms. "Mama."

My heart tries to climb out through my throat.

Luca watches me see the gun. He doesn't apologize. He doesn't reach for it. He just lets me know it's there, calm as a man showing his business card.

"Invite me in, Valentina." My name in his mouth, like he's owned it for years. "You don't want to have this conversation on your porch."

I stare at him. The gun. His face. The black car behind him.

I don't want to have this conversation anywhere. But wanting stopped mattering the second the porch light died.

I step back.

He wipes his shoes on my mat before he crosses the threshold. Twice, unhurried, like his mother is watching. Then he comes in and closes the door behind him.

Click.

Such a tiny sound. It feels like a vault sealing.

He looks around my living room. The toys. The folded laundry. The floral art I bought for three dollars at a church sale. His suit probably costs more than everything in this room combined. Possibly including the room.

I use the moment to angle myself, turning so that Mikey is behind the line of my shoulder, so that my body is between my son and the gun.

Luca's eyes come back. Straight to me. He catches me doing it, and something changes in his face. Barely.

Then his gaze moves past me. To Mikey.

And stops.

The dark curls. The hazel eyes, heavy with sleep, blinking at the stranger.

Stefano's curls. Stefano's eyes. Features from a man who never met him. Never asked to.

My stomach drops so hard it feels like I've missed a stair.

Anyone who ever met his father could do this math, and the man in my living room is doing it right now. One plus one. Stefano plus me. Two years old.

Oh, fuck.

I can't read a single thing on Luca's face while he does. No shock. No softness. No anger. Nothing. A closed door where a man should be.

His jaw flexes once. That's it.

One tiny movement, and somehow it's more terrifying than if he'd pulled the gun.

"Whatever you want," I hear myself say, low and fast, "whatever you think I did, fine. Me. But you're not touching my son."

The words are out before fear can stop them. Good. Fear can get in line.

Luca Petrucci looks at me for a long, long second. Then at Mikey. Then back at me.

"Your son," he says, "is the reason I'm here."